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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Democrats Who Voted For Obamacare Now Blast Obama Admin For 'Glitch" And Implementation

By Susan Duclos

Flashback: “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill,” Baucus said, according to the Flathead Beacon. “You know why? It’s statutory language. ... We hire experts.”

Senate Democrats pass Obamacare

In Yiddish it is called Chutzpah meaning nerve, gall, insolence or audacity, take your pick but Senators Max Baucus of Montana and Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Maria Cantwell (Wash.), all have it in spades as they tear into Gary Cohen, head of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, over a "glitch" written into the Obamacare law and the administrations handling of implementation of the law.

Starting with the "glitch" which the Senators blasting the Obama administration, are themselves responsible for because they passed the law, in their rush to jam it through Congress, against the opposition of Republicans and the majority of Americans who opposed the so-called Affordable Care Act at the time of passage.

Finally, Wyden pressed Cohen to help find ways to resolve a glitch in
the law which may result in the denial of federal assistance to
millions of Americans of modest means who could be priced out of family
health coverage at work. He referred to the Internal Revenue Service
ruling last month that workers cannot get federal tax credits to help
them purchase coverage in health insurance marketplaces, unless the cost
of the individual’s coverage through their workplace exceeds 9.5
percent of the worker’s household income. The ruling ignores the fact
that the cost of family coverage would be much higher.

“We’ve got
millions of people – working-class, middle-class people – who are going
to be pushed into a regulatory health coverage no man’s land,” Wyden
said. “They are unable to afford the family coverage through their
employer and ineligible for the subsidy that could be used by dependents
on the exchange.”

"Baucus questioned how well the online health insurance marketplaces
would interact with what he called 'archaic' computer systems at Social
Security and the Internal Revenue Service," Kaiser reports.

Cantwell, the Hill reports, "criticized the administration for
delaying implementation of the Basic Health Program--an option for
states to provide cost-efficient health coverage outside of Medicaid and
the law's new insurance exchanges." It was supposed to start next year
but the administration is delaying it until 2015. Cantwell asked Cohen:
"Are you artificially raising the cost to all taxpayers by trying to
lure them onto the exchange?" (Cohen said no, the Basic Health Plan, in
the Hill's paraphrase, "simply had to take a backseat to other
priorities.")

Wyden pressed Cohen to help find ways to resolve a glitch in the law
which may result in the denial of federal assistance to millions of
Americans of modest means who could be priced out of family health
coverage at work," according to Kaiser. At issue is an IRS ruling
limiting federal subsidies for such plans. Said Wyden: "We've got
millions of people--working-class, middle-class people--who are going to
be pushed into a regulatory health coverage no man's land." So much for
President Obama's promise that if you like your plan, you can keep it.

And Nelson "hammered" the Department of Health and Human Services
"for inviting Congress to cut funding for a new nonprofit insurance
model."

Each of these complaints from these Senators that all voted for Obamacare. when they could have joined Republicans in the Senate to stop it, stem from the very language and power given to the Obama administration written within the law itself.

A law they passed. Voted for. Yet now wish to distance themselves from.

If the law is impracticable to implement, or if it gives too much
discretion to executive-branch agencies like the IRS or the HHS, these
problems could have been anticipated if lawmakers had not been so
anxious to ram the bill through. Any single Democrat who was a member of
the Senate in December 2009--including Baucus, Cantwell, Nelson and
Wyden--could have single-handedly halted the process simply by joining
the 40 Republicans in declining to approve a vote on the floor. Instead,
every last one of them yielded to political pressure and voted "yes."

"Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put
some distance between themselves and the ACA," Mead observes, using the
abbreviated formal styling of ObamaCare as the Affordable Care Act. "We
don't blame them for trying, but it may be a futile effort. For better
or worse, their fates are now tied to that of Obamacare."

Nelson's quote is the most audacious of them all though when he said "I want somebody to be accountable for this, and if it was a mistake, for somebody to own up to it."

Look in the mirror Senator Nelson and you will see who should be held accountable.